Blendings at the Hillside Vineyard

Blendings Winery keeps its tasting room at 3924 Bingham Hill Road, on the line between Laporte and Fort Collins and just outside the city limits. A dirt road runs up to the winery building. Inside is a small tasting room. Outside, a patio looks over the vines toward the foothills, which a City Lifestyle writer called “almost touchably close.” Staff pour flights, single glasses, and bottles. The list runs through classic reds and whites, rosé, specialty reds, fruit wines, seasonal flavors, sangria, and a shelf the winery files under “Spicy & Adventurous.” Wine slushies come out on hot days. Dogs may sit on the patio but not indoors.

The kitchen is small. Reviewers on TableAgent have reported charcuterie, hummus, spinach dip, chocolate fondue over a sterno pot, and pizza. One guest in January 2026 ordered a “large” pizza and got a rectangle on a 10-inch pan. Reservations carry no time limit, and the winery suggests staying with a book and a bottle on the patio. The same guest wrote in September 2026 that visitors may walk out among the vines.

Marquette, Louise Swenson, and aronia

Three grape varieties grow on the hill. A 2022 profile in Colorado State University’s alumni magazine describes all three as “cold and hearty hybrid” grapes suited to the Northern Colorado climate. Marquette is related to pinot noir and gives black currant and cherry. Frontenac Blanc ripens yellow and gold and makes a pale, straw-colored wine. Louise Swenson is light-bodied, with notes of flowers, honey, and tangerine. The vineyard is pesticide-free, and a local company brings in bees to pollinate it. “At first we were worried about the bees and whether they would scare people at the weddings,” owner Tiffany Weber said. “Luckily, they don’t bother anyone and just do their thing.”

“Grapes like a view,” head winemaker Jonathan Sautter told City Lifestyle, repeating an old saying in the trade.

Rows of small blue-purple aronia berries grow beside the grapes. Raw, the fruit is not very pleasant to eat. It is smaller than a grape, with less sugar and more acid, and City Lifestyle counted fewer than a handful of wineries in the United States that make wine from it. Visitors may pick aronia to take home, along with recipe cards for tarts and pies written by Weber’s parents. “I bet we’ve had fifty folks from the community out here this last week,” co-owner Michael Wamsganz said in one picking season. In the same period, a bakery called Me Oh My Pie was picking the berries for aronia lemon bars sold in the tasting room. The alumni magazine counted more than 30 labeled blends and said a chili pepper wine sells out quickly at tastings and festivals.

Blending at the table

The winery takes its name from its main offering. In the two-hour Blendings Experience, guests sample five wines with a plate of meat and cheese and learn how aroma, structure, and balance shape flavor. They take notes, then blend two or three of the wines and bottle the result to take home. The sources disagree on who leads it. City Lifestyle names Sautter as the winemaker who guides blenders. The CSU alumni profile, from the winter 2022 issue, names the winemaker as Richard Bender. “You get to have a hands-on and practical experience working with wine,” Sautter said. The winery also makes signature blends with custom labels for businesses. The habit carries into the tasting room. One guest in January 2026 could not pick a favorite, so her server blended two wines for her without being told which.

A nurse, a CFO, and a vineyard gone untended

Tiffany Weber graduated from Colorado State in 1999. She started in health care as a part-time nursing assistant, earned a nursing degree, finished EMT school, and founded an air ambulance company in northeast Colorado. She later served as chief financial officer of Banner Health. According to the alumni magazine, she grew tired of missing her children’s games and of nights in Phoenix hotel rooms. With her sister, Lindsey Francel, she had been hosting weddings at a rental property in Brighton, and the two looked for a larger venue. A deal in Castle Rock fell through when a cash buyer outbid them at the last minute. Then this property came up for sale, vineyard included.

Weber and her husband, Michael Wamsganz, bought it in November 2020. “We have a passion for wine,” Wamsganz said, “and pairing the weddings with the wine was a natural fit.” BusinessDen dates the opening of the vineyard and wedding venue to 2021. Weber told that paper her grandfather was a dairy farmer and that she grew up on a corn and wheat farm. “I could drink wine like a champ, I love red wine,” she said. “But I had never made it before.”

The vines had gone without care while the sale went through. “We were concerned we were going to lose them,” Weber said. Both families moved onto the site, and three generations now work there. Francel runs the wedding side, which uses a 4,500-square-foot event hall, a pond and beach, flower gardens, and gazebos on the 10-acre property, all under the name Hillside Vineyard. “You’ll see me at the tasting rooms pouring wine or in my office doing all the accounting and payroll,” Weber said. “You’ll see me cleaning. You’ll see me out in the fields picking grapes and getting my hands dirty. I mow.” On most mornings she drinks her coffee on the front porch of the main building and watches deer try to get over the fence.

The Popes and the wedding fights

A preservation survey by Tatanka Historical Associates records the site as once part of the 1905 Brolliar Farm, on the eastern flank of Bingham Hill, historically associated with nearby Claymore Lake. The Pope family owned the parcel from 1965. A wholesale nursery was added to the family residence in 2000. From 2002, Randy Pope used the property for nonprofit summer camps for a girls’ basketball team he coached.

Weddings came next, and with them a long dispute with the neighbors, reported in North Forty News. The county Planning Commission denied Randy and Sheryl Pope’s first request to rent the property for events in February 2010. In May 2010 the commissioners approved a revised plan that allowed 18 weddings the first year, 12 a year after that, and 60 seasonal camp sessions. In December, after neighbors complained, the commissioners found violations of noise, occupancy, and other conditions. They revoked the approval and cancelled events already booked.

The Popes came back in 2011 with a larger plan: 33 weddings and seven corporate events a year, each limited to 130 guests, and a parking lot sized for 62 cars. Neighbors brought a petition they said showed two-thirds of the directly affected owners were opposed, citing noise and traffic on Bingham Hill Road. On November 22, 2011, the commissioners denied the plan by a vote of 2 to 1. Commissioner Steve Johnson and Chairman Tom Donnelly called the use incompatible with the rural area. Commissioner Lew Gaiter III dissented.

On October 19, 2015, the board approved a different proposal from Randy Pope, the Colorado Aronia Project at Bingham Hill Farm. It covered agritourism and the processing of aronia berries into dried fruit, juices, wine, jams, flavored chocolates, and powder, along with a bed and breakfast for up to six guests. According to the dossier’s record of that hearing, the approval was worded to include grapes and held weddings to the twenty-two already approved. Pope later hired Tatanka to survey what was then called The Preserve at Bingham Hill, a residence, event center, and tree farm, for possible conversion into a winery. Blendings at The Preserve opened on May 24, 2019. Guests there blended, bottled, and labeled wine bought from other wineries, at prices from $120 for three bottles to $1,300 for six cases. Grapes had been planted for future blends.

A balloon on the railing

The present owners say the special permit from 2015 allows two uses: agriculture and agri-tourism. They say events were held without trouble from 2015 until the 2020 sale. In 2022 a customer’s family member tied a balloon to the outside railing during regular hours. By the winery’s account, the county treated her tasting as a “private event,” which the permit does not allow, and the commissioners suspended the business permit for six months. The winery says it is the only winery in Larimer County not allowed to hold events.

In 2023, county staff decided the permit allows 11 cars a day in total. The winery calls the decision arbitrary. It reads the 2015 minutes as allowing 18 cars for agri-tourism, plus 5, plus 22 more in peak season. Walk-ins are still accepted, but reservations are strongly encouraged, and one reviewer advised friends to carpool. The winery also asks visitors not to bring balloons and not to wear bachelorette sashes, birthday crowns, gift bags, “or anything else that signals an organized event in the eyes of Planning and Zoning for Larimer County.”